Habanero chicken-pineapple stuffed pepper

Habanero hot peppers are not for everyone, most of the time you need to be brave to eat it, after all, they are pretty high on the scoville scale. The good news here is you can use the pepper in moderation accompany with some sweet factor (in this case pineapple) which help to neutralize the heat from the pepper. I use a homemade dehydrated habanero powder, which over time gets less and less spicy, making it tricky to dose up for a recipe. For this recipe you can use any style of hot pepper, the format your prefer wether it’s powder, sauce or even fresh. The dosage is all up to you, make sure to do it little by little to prevent a killing spicy dish.

I particularly love habanero because of it’s got this extra fruity flavor most peppers don’t have. The challenging part with habanero is: it’s a quite powerful one, the kind of pepper that you cut with latex gloves on. If you want to make a sauce with it and reduce the spice factor but keep its fruity flavor. Boil the hot peppers 2 or 3 times to take out some of the heat away, this while changing the water between each boil. Also a great way to use your favorite hot peppers is to make a nice hot sauce with it, so this way you get to dilute the heat and get extra flavors to the sauce. Check this hot sauce recipe of mine here: chicken wings recipe glazed with my homemade strawberry habanero hot sauce.

Stuffing peppers is a great way to add some color and give your family or friends a different dish format, which is nice to get through. This dish is a light and flavorful dish without much fat and filled with vitamins. The bell pepper isn’t too cooked, to get a nice hold and a fresh bite to it.

As for the hot peppers, called capsaicin. They are filled with the capsaicinoids compound, the element that gives it the heat. The capsaicinoids has been studied quite a bit in the last decade and is related to a better heart health by lowering the “bad cholesterol”, helping with blood clots, lowering blood pressure and also helps to clear blocked arteries. So, if you want your heart to stay in great shape, go get yourself a degustation of hot peppers, then figure out which is your “one” and grow it 0r buy a bunch.It’s for the sake of your heart after all…

Speaking of slicing peppers with gloves on… A good friend of mine was having me teach her how to cook for a while (when we started, she couldn’t even boil water). I didn’t even think about it and asked her to chop a jalapeño. Not nearly as spicy as a Habñero but still. Then she touched her nose. She didn’t know. Totally my fault. But suddenly she was freaking out and couldn’t figure out what was happening. It was a quick lesson. For both of us. haha..

Lovely recipe! I echo your thoughts on the character of a habanero – the fruity taste is spectacular, but you either have to develop a passion for heat, or figure out a way around it. I was unfamiliar with your trick about boiling in changes of water! I bet this is amazing, and I can just imagine all the flavours (especially the pineapple) working so nicely together. Good stuff.